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“The Case Against Western Military Assistance to Ukraine”
A superb essay (link below) that constitutes a valuable contribution to this matter. The author painstakingly (and, in my view, compellingly) lays his out arguments for the following propositions:
- It’s extremely unlikely that, had the West not helped Ukraine, Russia would have attacked a NATO member next
- Western military assistance to Ukraine makes proliferation more, not less, likely
- Providing military assistance to Ukraine is not cheap once you take into account the indirect costs
- The argument that committing to Ukraine’s defense was necessary to deter wars of aggression is flawed
- The argument from credibility is a self-fulfilling prophecy and a recipe for the sunk cost fallacy
Link:
https://philippelemoine.substack.com/p/the-case-against-western-military
Published in General
Ah, okay. I’ll see what, if anything, I can find. Thanks.
See my last comment, immediately above. You’ll find lots of Dugin-related citations in the linked RAND Corp report.
Here’s the money quote from the 2005 address by Putin. (clipped to fit by reply limit)
I consider the development of Russia as a free and democratic state to be our main political and ideological goal. We use these words fairly frequently, but rarely care to reveal how the deeper meaning of such values as freedom and democracy, justice and legality is translated into life.
Meanwhile, there is a need for such an analysis. The objectively difficult processes going on in Russia are increasingly becoming the subject of heated ideological discussions. And they are all connected with talk about freedom and democracy. Sometimes you can hear that since the Russian people have been silent for centuries, they are not used to or do not need freedom. And for that reason, it is claimed our citizens need constant supervision.
I would like to bring those who think this way back to reality, to the facts. To do so, I will recall once more Russia’s most recent history.
Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself.
Individual savings were depreciated, and old ideals destroyed. Many institutions were disbanded or reformed carelessly. Terrorist intervention and the Khasavyurt capitulation that followed damaged the country’s integrity. Oligarchic groups – possessing absolute control over information channels – served exclusively their own corporate interests. Mass poverty began to be seen as the norm. And all this was happening against the backdrop of a dramatic economic downturn, unstable finances, and the paralysis of the social sphere.
Many thought or seemed to think at the time that our young democracy was not a continuation of Russian statehood, but its ultimate collapse, the prolonged agony of the Soviet system.
But they were mistaken.
That was precisely the period when the significant developments took place in Russia. Our society was generating not only the energy of self-preservation, but also the will for a new and free life. In those difficult years, the people of Russia had to both uphold their state sovereignty and make an unerring choice in selecting a new vector of development in the thousand years of their history. They had to accomplish the most difficult task: how to safeguard their own values, not to squander undeniable achievements, and confirm the viability of Russian democracy. We had to find our own path in order to build a democratic, free and just society and state.
I read the article. It’s unusually well reasoned, so thanks for the link. I think it’s right in some areas:
A NATO country was not “next” if Ukraine fell. That’s one of the issues where Anne Appelbaum can be not just wrong, but infuriatingly righteous.
Defending Ukraine will not be cheap (this is, I think, bordering on straw man-ism, though.) Defending Ukraine will not help deter nuclear proliferation. (nor would a preemptive Kyiv surrender have helped deter it; I think it’s a wash.)
Biden’s remarks do go beyond needlessly provocative. They’ve been idiotic. If my man Richard Nixon were around, he’d slap Biden upside the head.
After this crisis is over, there will still be a world where Russia and Russian interests exist. How do we want to arrive at that point?
Other of his arguments are well stated, but strike me as dubiously based. He says the Baltics have nothing to worry about. Why? He doesn’t see why Putin would want to. Our ability to predict Putin’s moves has not been great. He sounds the alarm that Russia and China are growing closer. That’s kind of a , So what? Does he think it wouldn’t have happened, and was unaware that it already was happening anyway?
I appreciate the author’s unwillingness to dress up his argument with irrelevant propaganda. Too rare on the internet from any side.
Precisely. Thank you for sharing the context within which that selectively plucked snippet (the bit which you highlighted) resides.
For those interested in reading the entire speech in question, …
http://www.en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/22931
Just curious, does anyone ever check to make sure the “official transcripts” are what he actually said?
Indeed.
Thank you for taking the time to read it, and thank you for your thoughts on/critique of it, @garymcvey.
Gary, he addresses that in the first segment. The Baltic states are full members of NATO. If one accepts that Lemoine is correct when he says Vladdy won’t attack a NATO member, then Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia will not be attacked.
Now, he may be wrong in his assessment of risk that a NATO member will be attacked, but I don’t think he is. Especially after the losses RUA has suffered in UKR.
Here’s a 9min31sec video segment of the 2005 speech in question (note: the portion from the 0min45sec mark to the 3min55sec mark covers the portion that DonG excerpted in his earlier comment, #33), with English captions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTvswwU5Eco
PS:
Even though my Russian language skills (I grew up speaking both Romanian, my father’s tongue, and Russian, my mother’s tongue) have gradually rusted over the 45 years or so since my arrival on our American shores, they’re still passable enough for me to be able to confirm that the captions are accurate.
Which does also seem to argue in favor of assisting Ukraine, so they could be most effective at teaching RUA that lesson.
Okay, next question: does anyone check to see if the captions are the same as the “official transcript?”
Please, by all means, since you are now in possession of both the transcript and the captions, compare the two and let us know of any discrepancies you may be able to find.
I have learned over the years that it is more important to pay attention to Russian actions than to their words.
“It is more important to pay attention to X’s actions than to X’s words” is very good advice, applicable at EVERY level from the Individual to the Geopolitical (the US included, of course).
For sure. But it helps deal with the intelligentsia if they (the Russians, or Arafat, etc) say one thing but do another.
Gary, I think that you’re incorrect about predicting Putin’s moves. I don’t study his speeches myself, but I’ve seen experts in the area, particularly John Mearsheimer, cite Putin’s statements. The Russians made it very clear that they would not accept Ukraine and Georgia in NATO, when we foolishly announced this intention in 2008. The Russians have not been rattling the saber about the Baltic States.
As I recall, Putin’s proposal around December 2021, shortly before the war, wanted withdrawal of weapons from the Baltic States, but would let those states remain in NATO. I think that Putin, and the Russians, understand the importance of the NATO guarantee. This is why they would not allow Ukraine or Georgia in NATO.
So, it’s your position that Putin gets to decide who is allowed in NATO and who isn’t?
GPentelie, thank you for your efforts here.
I think that you performed a magnificent takedown of the Neocon narrative about Putin’s imperial intentions, starting with one of the key quotes that they use, Putin’s statement that “the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century.”
You demonstrated that this quote has been taken very badly out of context.
I want to press further, and particularly to challenge those on the anti-Russian side. You’ve just seen how a misleading narrative was created through dishonest, selective quotation of a speech by Putin. I don’t think that any of you, on the anti-Russian side, created that misleading narrative on your own.
I think that it was fed to you, by . . . well, you should ask yourself who.
I think that you’ll find that the answer is The Blob. This is what John Mearsheimer (and I think his colleague Stephen Walt) call the bipartisan foreign policy “establishment,” something like the unholy alliance of John Bolton’s Neoconservative warmongering and Samantha Power’s R2P (“responsibility to protect”) Liberal Imperialism.
My advice is to distrust The Blob. I think that they’ve been peddling false narratives to draw the US into overseas conflicts unnecessarily for — let’s see — about 106 years now.
Edited to add: Thanks to DonG, as well. Both of you were involved. Don, sorry, I lost track of who was writing the nested comments, and didn’t give you the credit that you deserve.
I’m with you 100% on the Ukraine war. I see many on Ricochet who are not in favor of helping Ukraine, buy my limited impression is that they are in the distinct minority.
This would align with a sociopath’s view. They do not see things in terms of right or wrong. They only see things in terms of what works for them. You have a very strange set of values for a Christian man. I haven’t been able to figure how they jive with the Christian faith.
Have you read the essay linked in the OP of this discussion/debate thread? Or are you here simply to plop an “I’m feeeeling what you’re feeeeling, too, ‘MarciN'” comment?
No, I haven’t read the essay. It is exceedingly long and I don’t care to put that much time into it. And yes, I was simply showing support for what seemed to me to be a Ricochet member who felt that “the crowd was against her.”
Walk a mile in my pradas….
Thank you for your honesty.
I read an article and it mentioned that the Reuters and AP translations were nearly the same (“disaster” verse “catastrophe”). It is probably close.
I don’t think he’s saying that he has those beliefs, but rather that he has decided others have those beliefs, even if they pretend not to.
We’re all stuck with the usual conflicts between speaking with precision and speaking in commonly accepted terms. The use of “choice” to effectively mean “pro abortion” is an example. When we refer to a “pro-Russian” or “pro war” line of argument, we are using unfairly oversimplified language, sure. But in common sense conversation, some shorthand is needed, or threads become so densely packed with qualifiers they become joylessly unreadable.
So here’s mine. For my entire lifetime, I’ve been willing to stick my neck out at times to be pro-Russian (not pro Marxist; I’m talking Russia here). When I was nine years old, one of my letters was read on Radio Moscow. I’ve been to the country almost a dozen times. My late father-in-law was a Russian Jew who never referred to his background as anything more than Russian, full stop, no modifier. Yet I know full well the cost of the Communist era, and the costs that the USSR, led by Russia, imposed on nations they controlled. Thing is, so do the Russians. Or they did. The Kosovo war was a critical blunder for America that was a major turning point for Russian public opinion. Milosevic was a bastard, let’s not play games about that, but Serbia is Russia’s little brother (Yugo Slav, “south slav”). I was there in 2001 and despite the fact that everyone was kind to me personally, I could tell that even two years after the bombardment, we sowed a generation of anger that was going to cost us somewhere, sometime.
I don’t write these comments to win friends, and this comment won’t win me any, because neither side likes it: Musk’s “solution” is closest to my opinion–Crimea has been effectively Russian for 300 years. Luhansk and Donetsk get referendums, real, no-BS elections to decide their fate. Russian forces leave everywhere else.
And what does Ukraine get? NATO membership?
I have read the essay, and find it a good summary of the delusional thinking that got the United States into this mess we have inflicted upon ourselves.
First, this talk of Russia invading NATO inverts the roles of aggressor and defender. NATO has been on the march to expanded power, wealth, and territory this entire century. I think the phrasing of the point assumes Ukraine is a NATO possession, in violation of every treaty signed on this subject.
Second, talk of proliferation of nuclear arms is a red herring. That is not an issue in this conflict, except in arguments that a chaotic and collapsed Ukraine region should have kept the nukes it inherited as a successor state to the USSR. No one wanted that at the time.
Third, calculations of the cost of the first year of the war miss several marks. The US is still able to “appropriate” from thin air any number of fiat dollars. What we cannot do, at any price, is to quickly manufacture the quantity of simple dumb weapons needed to fight an industrial ground war. We did not plan for this, requiring us to expend decades of accumulated military hardware in a single year.
The great lesson of this war, slowly sinking in, is that modern air forces are obsolete in conflict with a technological peer. There has been very little use of air power in the Ukraine Russia war because both sides had air defense networks. This has never happened before, certainly not at this scale. I predict that every nation in the world will scramble to aquire AD nets for the rest of this century.
Fourth, arguments that wars of aggression are uniquely evil are sophistry, ignoring the use of economic warfare to destroy lives at every scale of humanity. Wasted effort.
The Fifth argument applies to the past, not today. The Maidan coup was necessary because Russia was in a position in 2014 to outbid the United States with financial aid. Unwisely, we chose to respond with elite capture and military aid.
We are living the logical fallacy that only the vastly corrupt “sunk cost” of piles of military spending will now save us. We have enough to defend ourselves while we invent and build the war automation that will be needed in future conflicts.
Well, you did ask for my opinion on the essay. Little good it may do you.
Right- NATO is a major threat. NATO tanks have rolled into nation after nation…the hordes of NATO (most of whom only fully staff & equip their marching bands) couldn’t invade anything larger than Luxembourg w/o US support. The German army uses brooms as machine guns in its training, the Brits are cutting their army by 10%. The new British carrier put out to sea last week & they couldn’t even stock it with its normal weapons load. Do you know why most of NATO can’t provide leopard tanks to Ukraine- it is b/c they have few that are actually battle ready. Do you see Biden increasing the defense budget- his latest budget doesn’t even keep up with inflation.